Meet the Team – Darryl Turner (Principal Scientist, Immunology)

On day two of our Employee Spotlight week (Edinburgh edition), we are happy to introduce you to our Principal Scientist, Darryl Turner. Having worked in the academic lab of Professor Stephen Anderton, the co-founder of Aquila BioMedical, one of the four legacy companies that make up Concept Life Sciences, Darryl has been an instrumental member of our Immunology team since the beginning.  

Head over to our LinkedIn page to hear about Darryl’s career progression in his own words, and read below for additional insights about what he enjoys most in his role and his advice to early career scientists:

How long have you been at the company?

“I started with the legacy company Aquila BioMedical in 2015 and I’ve been here ever since.”  

What inspired you to pursue the career you have today?

“I’ve always had an interest in the natural world since I was a young kid. I then went to do a degree at Edinburgh University in zoology and then I moved to Moredun Research Institute for my honours project and my PhD in parasitology, with a focus on immunology. Then I was there for several years doing postdocs and the like, then I moved into the founder of Aquila’s academic lab, which was a T cell biology lab and kind of found my niche looking at the immune system in that way.”

How has your role evolved since you joined the team?  

“When I started, I was a Senior Scientist with input in individual projects. I’m now a Principal Scientist who helps oversee and design multiple projects.”  

What’s the best advice you can give to someone who has just started their career?  

“Develop your basic skill sets and understand a wide range of methods and don’t become too focused. But always take advice from the experts in any technique – you can’t know everything.”  

What is a typical day like for you?  

“Relatively varied, I still have input in the lab, especially when it comes to training new scientists. I read a lot to design the best experiments for our clients based on their needs, as the majority of what we do is custom.”  

What do you enjoy most about your role?

“Trying to come up with novel methods or solutions for client issues and problems, as I say, it’s kind of where my niche sits – trying to come up with these ideas and thoughts of how to overcome challenges.”

Can you tell us about any specific areas of immunology that you are excited to be working on?

“What we’ve been doing, or what I’ve been doing with my student this year is developing more complex 3D models of multicellular systems and trying to get a handle on those, so our clients can use them, and so we understand how to build them and investigate them.”

If you were a cell or protein, what would you be?

“I suppose the one that comes to mind is a macrophage – we do a lot of work around them. They’ve got a diverse function, range, and they do quite a lot. They communicate with a lot of cells, they interact with a lot of tissues – kind of like what I do, I interact with a lot of people!”  

Darryl’s wealth of knowledge and ability to work closely with our clients to create custom integrated solutions according to defined objectives and timelines, allows us to generate high-quality data and deliver excellent science to advance their projects. This aligns perfectly with our values and is one of our biggest strengths – thank you Darryl!  

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